It hurt itself in its confusion!
When we make a joke and someone tells us:
"I understand the joke and what you think you were saying but it still isn't cool"
We have so many choices on how to respond...
We may think "it's just a joke."
We may think it's not a big deal.
We may be speaking from the heart.
We may be speaking from vicarious experience.
We may have had an isolated exposure that one time.
We may never have to go through it in our life.
We may have friends that vouch for us.
We may have a skewed perspective.
We may not truly be able to relate.
We may not want to hear what they have to say because it sounds different from our internal narrative.
We may only know how to conquer and not compromise.
We may have a culture that has an escalated form of accepted-othering.
We may never see what it's done to someone and we may never wish to.
When we don't see or feel what it has done, it's very easy to decide and confirm that we're absolved of all the waste it may lay in its wake, maybe because no one has ever called us out before or because we may legitimately not be able to conceive how the joke was harmful or how we could ever possibly do something harmful like that?
Thing is, the impact of the joke really isn't ours to decide, especially when we don't look like or represent the person being made fun of.
The person at the butt of the joke doesn't get to have a say so often because the laughter of the joke drowns them out, the cackle of a majority that does not believe it to be an issue through all sorts of conditioning, subconscious and sub-textual rhetoric being constantly reaffirmed in every major piece of media and entertainment for the majority of our lives.
Why listen when we're in no disadvantage to decline?
But it's only if we listen closely to those of us who tell you:
This. Hurts.
That anything can change,
Bonds can be forged,
Voices can be heard,
Futures can be assured.
Often, we are so caught up in our intention that we fail to separate it from the impact.
We intend ALL sorts of things that don't pan out quite the way we imagine and when someone takes the time to let us know that it hurts, our reaction is everything.
We can let it lie and move on, negating the request for reform and platform.
We can rally our friends who are very likely to automatically back us up, perhaps from similar backgrounds assuring the harmful thing "wasn't harmful."
We can skirt the issue by pretending like we don't understand what we've done.
We can even re-brand ourselves to be someone else, covering up our actions to save face.
Anything not to be wrong, right?
Yet, so often it seems we are unable to truly grow in these moments by simply admitting even the notion of a relative wrongdoing occurring.
A shift in our thinking from:
"This is what I meant and that's that"
To:
"I didn't realize this is what it meant to them"
And adjust ourselves accordingly.
That is, if we seek to grow, at all.
Too many of us it seems, would rather die than admit we've caused damage to something (unless of course we meant to do damage) and will use every single trick in the psychology book to talk around the issue, over the issue, under the issue but nearly, never through the issue, unless it can be commodified on a long list of "remember when you did that totally not great thing but it was funny" for the buddies at the BBQ.
It's not dragging us down to listen, to consider, to comprehend, to adjust, to imagine it differently where we can visualize it's merit and give that idea a chance.
It's pulling the others up.
If you're anyone in the world, you are told that any combination of White, Heterosexual and/or Cisgender is the main character.
And if you are any combination of White, Heterosexual and/or Cisgender, you are assured that you're the main character ubiquitously and without doubt, on matters small and large, on God and on country, from here to the Moon and back.
Take it from someone raised White, Heterosexual and Cisgender.
I'm still unlearning and uncovering the ways I was made to believe the lie that my inherent worth was higher than that of "the others." From my limited perspective, on top of all the conditioning, the marginalization of LGBTQIA2+, Black, Brown, Indigenous, Disabled to my benefit...deep beneath that, I think one of the core issues here is trust, or the lack of.
How much can we trust each other?
Ourselves?
Our motives?
Our past?
Our victims?
Our family?
Our neighbors?
Our education?
Our senses?
Our belief in others as equals?
Our faith in the truth, possibly from another mouth?
Our version of the story not being real?
Our baked-in layers of prejudice and aversion towards difference and change?
Our imagination when it runs wild at the thought of discrepancies in the parallels between our personal story, the one we were taught, the one we're currently learning, the one we're still only scraping the surface of and the one we'll write tomorrow?
A head start doesn't even begin to cover it.
A head start is what we're given, the truth of our history, however hard it is to imagine or accept.
The Evolution of Trust
(Web, 2017, Nicky Case, takes about 30min-an hour)
Play it here FREE in your browser!
The Evolution Of Trust is a brilliant experiment about trust and everyone should play it at least once. It's detailed, imaginative, open, hopeful, realistic and definitely isn't going to solve or remove prejudice, racism, transphobia, fatphobia, fascism, or all the jerks + assholes out there...
But it's a fascinating and impactful, interactive deep-dive on trust, what it means, how we use it, what we gain from the different methods in which we give it and the framework for part of what tools we're going to have to develop as a means of getting our asses out of these endless culture wars and into the class war that we're truly in, fueled by our manufactured hate for one another, perpetuated as long as it benefits the main character who also happens to run the show and has ran the show of our lives for far too long at the great expense and exploitation of others.
When we tell a joke,
Are told that it's hurtful,
Then shrug it off or assure positive intent without apologizing or seeking to rectify the harm in any way,
We are not trusting:
The content of the joke to be anything other than our intention,
The person breaking our supposed reality as to what's fair game to joke about,
The person we have ridiculed as having a valid, clear stance in them pointing out the hurt,
The possibility that it could ever do any harm.
We are saying:
"I don't trust you to know when you're being hurt"
And really, the main character never has to.
Now, they call it "cancel culture" when it's really just accountability.
Who can we trust but those who express their pain, about their pain?
What sort of trust is necessary to bridge that gap?
Why does trust have to be something so difficult to gain?
Where do we find inside us a trust we never knew how to have?
When are we going to trust each other enough to know it's real?
A video game cannot fix this.
We can if we are willing to yield and trust.
See you next game...